Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.

The Supreme Court recently released the transcript of the oral argument in the West Virginia disqualification case (see Justice for Sale?), which was argued on March 3, 2009. Because, for example, Justice Kennedy seemed favorably inclined [see, e.g., Tr. at 33], I am cautiously optimistic for a five-to-four decision in favor of due process.To read the full transcript, click here. My favorite lines include:

§JUSTICE STEVENS: “We have never confronted a case as extreme as this before. This fits the standard that Potter Stewart articulated when he said ‘I know it when I see it.’ (Laughter.)”

§COUNSEL FOR MASSEY COAL: “I understand the . . . concerns about having the [apparently biased] judge making the decision about whether recusal is required, but that is not the practice of this Court, and if it’s not the practice of this Court, I frankly doubt it’s unconstitutional.”

§JUSTICE BREYER: “The debt of gratitude . . . isn’t the theory that underlies [the due process challenge], though it may in part. . . . A normal human being also thinks, if I play my cards right, maybe [the substantial expenditure] will be repeated, and they’ll want to keep me in office. And we have the fact of how it looks, and we don’t have a situation where the something like this is inevitable, where you appoint judges.”

§JUSTICE SOUTER: “If one is going to go into that calculation, one is going to assume that in eight years, there’s going to be another three million dollars waiting to be spent.”

§JUSTICE BREYER: “Call [the proposed due process standard] a ‘probabilty’ [of bias]; call it an ‘appearance.’ Use the language that you want, but put them together, and they spell ‘mother.'”

§JUSTICE SCALIA: According to Justice Scalia’s rather trusting views of judicial elections, if someone were to contribute money to his hypothetical campaign, “that person contributed money to my election because he expected me to be a fair and impartial judge, and I would be faithful to that contributor only by being a fair and impartial judge. That is showing gratitude.”